240 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



season, when anthrax broke out in a neighbouring 

 kennel. This would not have affected the otterhounds, 

 which were kennelled a couple of miles away, only my 

 man had been to the infected kennels for a couple of 

 buckets of flesh. Fortunately, thanks to prompt 

 measures being taken, this flesh was not given to the 

 hounds, but was buried in quicklime instead. Yet for 

 a week or two, like a very sword of Damocles, the 

 menace of quarantine, of confinement to kennels, of 

 the deduction of two or three months from an all too 

 short summer "when water permits," hung over our 

 heads. 



The difficulties in the field are many and distracting. 

 At the head of them I should be inclined to put apathy. 

 The intending Master will receive some few replies to 

 his hopeful letters calculated to cool the bravest enthu- 

 siasm. I remember one Essex man who wrote that 

 "they did not take much interest in otter-hunting in 

 their neighbourhood." Another, in Surrey, considered 

 the presence of hounds in summer " a most improper 

 proceeding ! " A third, a Hertfordshire sportsman, 

 wrote thus : " We go in for trout-fishing and cannot 

 possibly allow an otter to exist on our waters ! " 

 Another Essex landowner objected in these terms : " I 

 cannot allow hounds to draw my river at any time. My 

 coverts adjoin it, and I rear pheasants. But for all this, 

 I consider myself a sportsman." This kind of thing 

 filled four pages. I have had one river closed to me 

 for pheasants, a second because of nesting partridges, a 

 third for ducks, and a fourth for swans ! As a visitor 

 once remarked : " They have to whip off every mile or 



